Luke 23:34

THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN WORDS

‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’

Luke 23:34

The greatest fact in the whole world is sin; the greatest need in the whole world is forgiveness. But Christ needed not to pray for forgiveness for Himself; so He prays for our very greatest need—forgiveness.

I. We come to church, and, kneeling underneath the Cross, we ask that the blood of the covenant may fall upon us, and we say devoutly what others said in derision, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children,’ ‘for the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.’ Mind that we never belong to a Christless Christianity or a bloodless gospel. What we need is forgiveness; we shall always need it to the very last breath—Pardon through the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot, verily ordained before the foundations of the world.

II. Yet there is a trouble that you feel.—God forgives me—yes, I believe in the forgiveness of sins. And yet, what troubles you? There is a trouble, your heart is not at rest. Why not? Because I cannot, I cannot, I cannot forgive myself. Though I may walk down from Calvary feeling forgiven, all my pride is clean gone out of me. The Roman soldiers needed forgiveness for crucifying Him. Well, we may crucify Him; we may be what the Apostle calls the ‘enemies of the Cross of Christ’; and we need forgiveness just the same. I wonder whether they ever forgave themselves for crucifying Him. Tradition says that they were all converted and saved. But I think the soldiers must have said to themselves, ‘Can I ever forgive myself?’

III. Our consolation is our Lord’s own excuse.—We do not know what we do. When I did wrong I did not know it was so bad, but the Holy Ghost has convinced me of it. When I committed the sins I did not know how sinful I was, and I come under the Lord’s excuse. ‘Plead Thou my cause, O Lord, with them that strive against me.’ I did not know what I know now. God forgive me. Let us hide ourselves right away in the Rock of Ages, for our only happiness must be in our Crucified Lord. Kind hearts are near us, yet every one has a limit to his kindness, but God has none. Man’s forgiveness may be sweet, but God’s forgiveness is sweeter; yes, He stoops to give it, He lays forgiveness at our feet.

—Rev. A. H. Stanton.

Illustration

‘The first act of Jesus in the recovery of man must be forgiveness. The first word to the soul must be, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” Forgiveness is the beginning of the life of the soul with God. In vain we build on any act but this: and this is the act of God. “Who can forgive sins, but God only?” “But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, He saith unto the sick of the palsy, Arise, take up thy bed.” All things in their places. Forgiveness comes first, the rest afterwards—“remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His passion.” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

IGNORANCE AND CRUELTY

‘They know not’: that is why they are so cruel. It is ignorance that makes us cruel.

I. It is because of our sinful ignorance that we are so pitiless, so savage.—It is when we pass responsibility about from one to the other, until no one knows exactly what is being done, that society shows itself cruel, without any check from a startled conscience or a sympathetic regret. War, for instance, some wicked war into which a nation plunges in a passion, is a crime done again and again by men who know not what they do. Surely if those home citizens who in the frenzy of some jealousy or crime have voted wildly for some needless war had themselves to witness and take part in the brutalities that follow, they would recoil from it. But the transference of responsibility enables it to happen. The man who voted says, ‘I never knew it was so horrible as that’; and the soldier who carries it out says, ‘Under his orders it is right.’ And between them they know not what they do.

II. And not only in war, but in peace, society is always committing sins like this, trampling under foot the neglected, the forgotten, the despised, no one knows how nor why. The order passes. Those who give it do not see what is involved; those who receive it never know why it was given; and each is satisfied, and each is unaware of guilt. So it is that savage things are done in the gross, done in London to-day, done by a system of society to which you and I belong; brutalities which every single member of that society would never tolerate if he knew what he did. So Christ’s little ones, young children, are given over to shame and a curse; many led, slaughtered, doomed to inevitable sin by us. So the poor are driven under by the fierce pressure of relentless competition which we support, that when we see it enrages us.

Such a world of unknown guilt you and I carry about us every day. Recall the dreadful fact, though you cannot measure its reality. Pray to-day that your eyes may be opened a little to see what they do. And now, in humility and shame, confess how sorely we too need this first pleading of the Holy Martyr on our behalf: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’

Rev. Canon Scott Holland.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE UNKNOWN SINS OF OUR SOCIAL SYSTEM

In times of sorrow, of agony, what is it which most occupies our minds? Is it not ourselves? Who were those for whom Jesus so prayed? It was for the Roman soldiers, and it was because they knew not what they did.

I. The unknown sins of our social system.—We want to realise one thing as we think of these words, that those sins that we are committing every day that we know not, need God’s forgiveness. We belong to a great social system. We know of it, we read of it, we say it is impossible for us in the fullest sense to be our brother’s and our sister’s neighbour; yet is it not true—I say it in no reproving sense—that quite unconsciously you and I are causing suffering to others? In our ordinary commercial transactions, in our ordinary business dealings, nay, in our social duties, in those things which occupy our everyday attention, in the very shopping that we do, are we quite certain that we are not causing others to sin? Are we not committing sin in ignorance, then? And is it because we cannot find out how our brothers and sisters are living? Is it because we cannot know, or because, too often, we say we have no time to inquire? Are we quite certain, for example, that the things which we buy have not been made in sweating dens, and caused suffering and anguish, that the very stitches which are sewn are not sewn with tears and almost with blood?

II. The practical lesson.—If the Cross and Passion of our Blessed Lord means anything at all, it means something very practical, it means something which will touch our daily life to-morrow, which will send us forth to our daily work with a keener sense of our social responsibilities. So I ask each one to pray, ‘Father, forgive me for the sins which I know not, for the things I have never inquired about, for the things I cannot inquire about; forgive me for these sins.’ I ask you to pray that God will forgive us all the suffering, all the sorrow, all the pain that, it may be, we have needlessly caused.

—Rev. T. G. Longley.

(FOURTH OUTLINE)

TRUSTFUL, PERSEVERING, SELFLESS

If ever God’s cause seemed lost in this world, it was at the moment when the Cross of Jesus was uplifted; and yet that is the very moment when the Eternal Son lifts up His voice in prayer to God—prayer trustful, prayer persevering, prayer selfless.

I. By this wondrous prayer, uttered at such a moment, Jesus is the Helper of them that doubt.—You find it hard to believe in the Providence, in the overruling care of God. But Christ would have us not confuse imagination with knowledge. Just as in science we know many things which we cannot imagine, chemical transformations which we cannot picture to ourselves, so it is with the doctrine of the Providence of God, which, though we cannot imagine, we know, we believe.

II. We must remember not to attempt a generalisation of God’s children.—This world in which we live is not wholly given over to the powers of the enemy. Everywhere God has His own children. We must never give way to that faithless thought that God has forsaken the world, or that He has left Himself without witness.

III. And then we should always remember that much of the apparent forgetfulness of God which distresses, much of the sin and neglect that vexes our souls is, after all, due to ignorance. ‘They know not what they do.’ We can put ourselves by the side of Jesus Christ, and thank and bless His gracious name that He has brought us relief in one of the most painful and fundamental doubts that can shake the soul.

(FIFTH OUTLINE)

THE SCOPE OF THE SAVIOUR’S PRAYER

‘Forgive them.’

I. The scope of the prayer.—We need not be at too great pains to ask who they are—whether the Roman soldiers, only ignorantly doing what they were told to do; or the Jews, who in ignorance were smiting themselves with a mortal blow; or Herod; or Pilate; or the false accusers, the religious leaders of the people and their priests. We need not limit the scope of our Saviour’s prayer to any one class, for the forgiveness of it is infinite. It is a prayer for the whole race of sinful men from the beginning to the end of the world.

II. The ground of the prayer.—‘They know not what they do.’ That is in a measure true of all sin, and it is part of the wonderful love of Jesus that He takes it all into account. Let us reflect, however, that though we do not know the full horror of the sin we commit, we do know enough, if we only acted up to our lights, to be saved from committal thereof. We need to pray that our eyes may be opened, and that we may be forgiven our sins, not as we know them now, but as He knows them.

III. Forgive as we would be forgiven.—To persist in unforgiveness is to set ourselves in direct antagonism to the will of Christ. We must repress our hatred of those who wrong us, our irritability with those who vex us. If there is one person, enemy or friend, against whom we cherish the thought ‘I shall never forgive him,’ that thought stands between us and the Saviour’s forgiveness.

IV. And let us pray for those who sin in ignorance, that they may know.

—Rev. Lionel G. B. J. Ford.

Illustration

‘How often men exclaim, “I’ll pay him out,” “I’ll be level with him yet,” “He shan’t insult me for nothing,” “I’ll put a spoke in his wheel.” How often we cannot forgive at all—as when Queen Elizabeth (if the tale be true) said to the Countess of Nottingham, who confessed that she had kept back the ring by which Essex pleaded for forgiveness, “God may forgive you, but I cannot.” I remember one edition of the story is that the Queen even shook the dying Countess in her bed as she said, “God may forgive, but I never can.” “If you pray for a man sufficiently often,” said William Law, “and sufficiently fervently, and sufficiently in secret, you cannot but love that man, even were he Alexander the coppersmith.” ’

(SIXTH OUTLINE)

TYPICAL WORDS OF CHRIST

Christ had not spoken under the tortures of the scourge. He had been dumb, as a lamb brought to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7). But now He speaks, not in words of complaint or of anger, but of sweet forgiveness—‘Father, forgive them.’

I. The words are typical:—

(a) Of His office; because He was Saviour and had come to obtain forgiveness for sinners (Acts 5:31; Ephesians 4:32).

(b) Of the whole course of His life. Had he not constantly put aside and forgiven offences against Himself (Matthew 12:32)? And made His ministry a constant scene of kindness and self-sacrifice (Matthew 20:28), often to those who were ungrateful?

II. The Saviour is ever saying, ‘Father, forgive them.’ He ever liveth to make intercession for us. The Cross is His mediatorial throne. When he ascended it, He began to intercede—His first word is one of intercession; and so it has been ever since.

III. ‘They know not what they do.’

(a) They obeyed partly the orders of their stern discipline, partly (as in their cruel mocking and scourging of Jesus) they followed the impulse of savage and brutal natures, to torture whatever came helpless into their power. But they had no idea that they were putting to death the Lord of Glory.

(b) So with sinners. They (Hebrews 6:5) crucify the Son of God afresh by every sin. Do we think of that when we sin? Do we think what sin was to Jesus on Calvary—and what it is to Him when He sees it in His people now?